Mind Shattered
by JaneLovesDrama
Summary: A 16-year-old sophomore from Ohio with unusual powers is brought to the BPRD.
1. Beginning

AN: I wrote this about 3 or 4 years ago, and just abandoned it. I have a habit of beginning stories and never finishing them. Recently, I decided that I was going to re-work it so that I could keep everything that I have and let the fic rest with a concrete ending. This is the product of that; a completed fic that has morphed from what it was originally supposed to be.

I think I must have been normal, once upon a time. Only, since about fourth grade, I've been pretty abnormal. I can't explain it. Nobody understands, not even me. Whenever I come in the slightest contact with anybody, I can see things, their entire past, present, and future. I take on their best and worst qualities and I have to fight with all my power to keep _me _from downing. It's like I take on two brains, one of them and one of me. Only the other brain wants to eat mine. It stays with me until I touch someone else, and then the cycle starts all over again. If I try really hard and don't come in contact physically with people, their personalities fade from me after a few days.

While this… talent has labeled me a freak, nobody knows of it. I don't tell people unless I think I can trust them, and I'm usually wrong. Everytime I've told someone they think I'm crazy and usually never speak to me again. Most people think I'm 'not all there'. I've succeeded in pushing away my entire family and everyone I could have considered a friend. They know that I'm strange, but most of them have no clue why. I think that I would be a very social person if I didn't have to hide myself away. Because I have to avoid touching people, I try to stay as far from them, emotionally and physically, as possible. I've had an almost impossible time making friends.

When I'm completely me, that is to say, in the period between the last person I've touched fading from me and the point at which I will touch another person, I love to run. On most days in any season but track season, anyone looking can find me on the track that circles the high school football field.

Which is where she found me. The woman in leather. The woman whose world was in flames.


	2. Found But Never Lost

I always feel small when I look at the stars.

On a Wednesday night during summer vacation, nobody has any need to go to a random high school football field, except me. I don't know what time I start running but after at least two hours, the sun starts to set and I stop. I pick up the heavy layers that I use to protect myself up off the ground where I left them and walk to the visitor side bleachers, pulling on the sweatpants and hooded sweatshirt as I go. The bleachers are cool, but I don't feel them, can't feel them, through my layers.

That's one misfortune of hiding my skin from the world: I rarely feel the rain or the grass. I'm always hot and the clothes are itchy, but I can't chance it.

I pull my hood over my head, blocking myself from the people who might have touched me, if anyone had been around. I wrap my arms around me against the cool night air and look up. A beautiful smattering of stars greets me, and I get lost looking for constellations, completely missing the sound of footsteps coming toward me.

When I realize I'm not alone, I put my hands on the bench on both sides of me, ready to run if I have to.

"Caroline Archer?" A kind but strong voice asks. I look up at the woman standing in front of me. She has choppy, dark hair and sad eyes, and looks as if at one point she was unsure of herself. She also looks capable of amazing things. I can't help but trust her. Nobody has spoken my name in a very long time and it catches me off guard. I push the hood back from in front of my eyes and study her. She looks like a relatively normal person who has been through a lot.

She takes my silence as an answer and invites herself to sit next to me. It takes me a moment to realize that she is speaking, but she notices this and begins again.

"I'm Liz Sherman, from the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. Things are very complicated, but The Bureau sent me to 'extend our invitation' to stay with us. It's an open invitation."

I stare at her in disbelief. Paranormal Research and Defense? What is that supposed to mean? And why does this Bureau want me? It's not the first time in my life that I feel as if there has been a mistake, but then I realize who I am. And what I can do.

At this point, I'm just feeling anger. Why send some normal person to come get me? Just another person who doesn't understand me. Angry tears well up in my eyes and I can't stop them.

"You don't know what I can do, do you? You don't understand, just like the rest of the world! I don't want to be sent to some place that will objectify me more, _I just want to be normal_!" Once I started yelling I couldn't stop. All the feelings I had been holding inside, the ones I couldn't tell anyone because no one would listen were out. And she listened all the entire way through my angered yelling and rambling.

When I was done I found myself standing in front of her and breathing like I just ran two marathons. Her knees were propped up in front of her, age etched her face but so did understanding. She extended her hand in front of her with her elbow resting on her knee, her fingers slightly curled around the air. For a few moments she sat there staring at it. It seemed like a natural gesture for her, but was odd to me. I followed her lead and watched her hand. Within a few seconds it burst into beautiful blue flames.

I sat down heavily on the bench and the tears I had been holding in through the conversation spilled over without my consent. Liz pulled her hand into a fist and the flames stopped. I nodded, saying without words that I wanted to go where she came to take me. Maybe I could find acceptance there. She reached over to touch my hand and offer her comfort, but I whipped my hand away, knowing the consequences. Our hands brushed, anyway, and the floodgates broke.

And endless string of memories, events and emotions poured into my brain. Birthdays. Fights. Happiness and loss. Monsters my brain could never think up on it's own. A big, red man. And flames, so many flames. I felt small again, and everything that happened in the last half hour and in my whole life took it's toll on me.


	3. Burning the Past

I woke up in my own bedroom with my radio alarm blaring in my ear. The clock read 9:00, which meant I had slept through an alarm that could wake the dead for four hours straight. This was too hard for my brain to comprehend after being passed out for longer than I had been in 10 years. I don't get much sleep. My stress level doesn't allow it.

Which is why it took me several minutes to realize that that my hands were on fire. I have to admit that I panicked a little bit. Okay maybe a lot. I scrambled out of my bed without touching anything with my hands and stood in the center or my room. Someone else's thoughts were poking at the edges of my brain and I sorted through them, starting with the most recent of them- last night. I didn't really need to go further than that to figure out why I was on fire. Her being was strong in my head, and I was unable to control her powers.

"This is just wonderful." I whispered through my organized panic. On top of it all, the smoke alarm registered the smoke coming from my flaming hands and proceeded to warn the entire house. Now I was really panicking. Within ten minutes the fire department would be here, and they would find me on fire. As my panic grew, the flames began travelling over my arms. Through the clouds covering the logic and reason in my mind, I wondered if I could try to stop it.

The sensation of being on fire was a strange one. It didn't hurt in the least. It felt like silk was moving over the surface of my skin. I pretended like it really was silk and imagined it sliding off of my hands. The imaged flickered with the flames and then died. I realized that I was entirely engulfed and the flames had spread over my entire room. I didn't know how much of the rest of the house was on fire, but I decided that I would rather stay here than have to explain why I was on fire but not hurt. Could I get arrested for accidentally causing a house fire by being a freak? I think I might have been crying if the flames hadn't been hot enough to evaporate the tears.

Suddenly exhausted for the second time in two days, I feel to my knees, but held on to my consciousness. A shape appeared in the doorway, and I was about to yell at it to leave before I realized it was Liz, and that the fire –_her fire_- wouldn't affect her. Actually, she was enveloped by flames, just like me.

"It's all your fault!" I yelled over the roaring of the fire. I couldn't be sure but I think she yelled "I know!" back. She grabbed onto my arm and dragged me down the stairs onto the first level of the house I grew up in. By now the entire thing was up in flames and burning down fast. We ran out the back door and into the yard. No one was there and she turned to me.

"You have to trust me. Please don't ask any questions. Just concentrate as hard as you can. Picture the flames leaving." I watched her flames extinguish and closed my eyes. I saw myself, on fire, standing in front of a mirror; but I wasn't on fire, I was just covered in a silky material. I watched as it fell away and thought of nothing else. Slowly I climbed down from my panic and then the flames on my body were gone.


	4. In Between

For the past few weeks, my life has felt like a movie montage. You know, the kind where they show a clip for about 5 seconds then move on to another, and they're all set to upbeat music? Well take out the upbeat music and you have my life. It's been so frantic recently, ever since I burned my house down.

After Liz stopped my episode, three guys who looked official came and escorted us to an annoyingly sleek and shiny car with the blackest tinted windows I've ever seen. Two of the suited men swiftly climbed into the front seats of the car, leaving the back seats to Liz, the last man, and me. It was bigger on the inside than it looked, because we were able to fit with a lot of room to spare. I didn't pay attention to where we were going. I was too busy having a silent panic attack, which, in my defense, is what any normal person would do. Trust me, I'm an expert at normal people. I may not be normal myself, but I know what they think, better than they do, sometimes.

It could have been hours or days, I don't know, but eventually we pulled into the front drive of a stunning building that looked like it was being wasted on it's use: The sign said 'Waste Management Services.' I was angry all over again. Who were these people who randomly come to OHIO of all places and bring me to a waste management building under the pretenses of some secret government organization? They interrupted my life, which I'll admit was living Hell, but at least I was surviving. There is absolutely no way that I was going to stand this…

… But then again, this change could be exactly what I need. If Liz really was telling the truth then I wouldn't have to suffer anymore. Indecision clouded inside of me, and nerves hugged me. I didn't know what to do.

So I sat like a good little Government-kidnapped girl and waited. For God knows what. Or, rather, _the Devil_knows what.


	5. Emotional Abstinence

I felt like a cartoon the first time I stepped into the Bureau. Besides being completely different than one would think a normal underground government organization would be, there was a room we passed full of men in black suits, brandishing guns and shooting at… well, something with tentacles. Nobody paid it any mind be me. I froze in shock. _They weren't lying._

"It's Friday." Liz said, as if that made up for it. Apparently more time had passed in the car than I'd thought. I realized that I was in the same position as the tentacled thing. A very small part of keeping me was to protect me from the world; it was mostly to protect the world from me. Was I really capable of causing that much damage? I'm only a teenager. I'm a 16 year old girl from Ohio. Why is it deeper than that? What did I do to deserve this?

By now I've decided that I'm sick of panicking and freaking out. I'm simply not going to feel anything at all. It's easier to feel than pain and panic, which is what I'm really feeling right now. And I'm also feeling that Liz's mind is mostly gone, a helpful turn of events. With her gone, I can think clearer and relax (just a little, considering the current events). I lose myself in my own thoughts as we travel down the hallway, ignoring the strange things in the rooms we pass and the men and women who come up to Liz and our escorts with seemingly important information. I didn't notice, at first, when a tall, thin, blue fish-man joined our party.

This first thing that comes to my attention was the way he talked. Normal tone, but the way he strung his words together seemed like it belonged in an old movie. He sounded intellectual and soft-spoken, where as the other people who spoke around us were harsher and more terse. My subconscious sounded a silent alarm that something was different, and I tuned into their conversation.

"I'm worried about her, she's been in shock for the last two days. No response since we first spoke at the stadium. I think what she... does is similar to you, only she has to come in contact with the person..."

"It's natural for her to panic, and for you to worry. You and she are very similar, which is the most likely cause for your concern."

"Still, I wish there was something I could do. She lost everything in that fire, and it was completely my fault. I knew what she could do; yet I still let her touch me. I invited her to do this to herself. It's awful. I feel awful."

A tugging in the back of my (her) brain, and a whispered "I wish the Professor were here." told me what she didn't want to say. It must have been a strong desire for it to break through; she was so weak by now in my mind. I realized with a wave of exhaustion that I was weak as well. I think Liz noticed this because she touched my shoulder lightly where I was covered by my... I never got a chance to change out of my clothes from my track visit where I first met Liz. I was dismayed to find that I smelled like sweat and smoke and my clothes hung in burnt shreds around me. Now, I looked like a proper freak to match my strange abilities.

I heard once that people cry when they're frustrated or angry, and not when they're sad. I was feeling all of these, plus more, when I was ushered into a huge room that I first thought was a library. The walls were completely covered with shelves upon shelves of books, with the exception of one wall that held an aquarium. I breathed in and smelled the scent of old books. In my state, my reaction was delayed, but I thought the word 'sanctuary' when the office became clear to me. It took me another few beats to realize that the empty aquarium was for the fish-man (who's name I still didn't know). A chair was offered to me, and I gratefully took it. That was the point at which my angry, frustrated, sad, panicked, confused tears started flowing. That was anothing thing to add to my list. Sick of panicking, of freaking out, and of crying. So much for feeling nothing.

Somewhere in my mind it registered that a voice near me said that I was overwhelmed and in shock. A familiar woman's voice told someone named Abe to tell someone named HB (what kind of name is that?) to go away. She (who is she? me?) isn't ready; give her some time, poor thing.

Passing out seemed like the best option at this point, although there was really nothing I could do to stop it if I had wanted to.


End file.
